Cathy C. Post was born in Texas but spent only three years of her life there before her family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Mrs. Post stayed in Lake Charles through college, attending McNeese State University. She graduated with a degree in home economics and business and went on to teach kindergarten and high school for several years. However, she learned that “teachers have one of the most important and difficult jobs in the world—and were not well compensated for their efforts” and decided that a career change might be in order.

Mrs. Post spent time as a legal secretary for the district attorney’s office in Lake Charles before moving with her husband and children to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There she began her twenty-year career as a secretary at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a job she loved.

After she retired, Mrs. Post began to research Hurricane Audrey, the 1957 storm that caused so much death and destruction in her hometown of Lake Charles. Recognizing the need to learn from hurricanes of the past, she has chronicled the desperate struggles of six families, including her own, to survive the deadly storm.

Mrs. Post now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband. Although she loves the Southwest, she knows that “the sound of waves crashing onto the beach will forever draw this Cajun author back to the Deep South and the Louisiana coast.”